ADI's Fishman remains bullish despite economic uncertainty

NEW YORK— Despite ongoing weakness in its industrial business, Analog Devices Inc. (Norwood, Mass.) is seeing its role change in the sector as its customers are starting to rely on the chip maker to provide systems-level solutions, not just components.

“Some of them are actually asking us to do a lot more integration for them than we've ever done in the past, either for reasons of speed, performance or cost or size,” said Jerald Fishman, president and CEO of ADI, during its earnings conference call with analysts.

Although it’s a “very slow-building phenomenon,” ADI’s Fishman sees that a growth opportunity for the company, a trend that didn’t exist just five years ago.

Fishman didn’t give details about which product areas or functions the company was looking to fill in its product portfolio. But he did say that he isn’t looking to compete in the “overcrowded” broad-based power management business. ADI is focused on where it is in control of the signal processing bill of materials to add power capability, Fishman said.

For now, however, sales in its industrial segment, which accounts for nearly half of its top line, fell 12 percent in its third fiscal 2012 quarter over a year ago, but remained flat sequentially after posting strong growth in the second quarter. The company said that most of the weakness came from the energy sector, and that it had expected sales in the industrial automation to rebound.

ADI’s largest industrial customers have indicated that while their earlier growth expectations for 2012 have modulated in the past few months, they currently see very little deterioration in their business to date and they don’t expect significant downturn for the balance of the year.

In addition, ADI’s distribution channel, which primarily serves the industrial market, was consistent throughout the quarter and stable in July. ADI saw stronger bookings in July from its distributors, indicating that while they too remain cautious, they don’t see deterioration in their business in the near term.

“These trends are very significant for ADI given the importance of the industrial market to our revenues and to our profits,” Fishman said.